There's nothing happening this morning, and I haven't found any other awesome Jim Edmonds chimeras to make, which means it's time to cop out and compile the results of our campaign to guess Albert Pujols's eventual extension. A little less than one month and 361 entries later from various regulars, lurkers, and Buzz Killingtons, we have our community prediction: 7.6 years (just in time for the trade deadline!), $31.3 million. Rounding up, that gives Pujols $217 million to play with, which is not a bad deal, in your sub-minimum-wage host's opinion.
Some interesting solutions while we wait for the real deal to come over the wires:
- Effin' zoomzoom, or else someone posing as zoomzoom, recommended a 1000-year, $900 million contract. It would probably have to be backloaded; by the part of the contract where we've downloaded ourselves into a computer-simulation and have no need for paper money he'd really be a steal, so long as the computer simulation is not Triple Play 98. (I really can't warn you enough about that developer's team. 1000 foot home runs from several spots in the order, at least one bat that appears to be a magic wand, a number-one starter throwing 150 and standing 15-20 feet tall.)
- On a similarly long-term tack, barronmo offers Albert Pujols the ultimate deflation play with a 72-year, $1.85 million contract. The right time for this deal would be, say, 1991, and the right place would be Japan.
- elbirdo5 went in the opposite direction, offering Pujols three years, $100 million. I'm all for keeping long-term deals as short as possible, but I'd probably spread those $300 million out a little more. How's 72 years sound?
Finally, one raisethedead offered Pujols an 8 year, $20 million contract with the following clauses: "An option to help pick out trades and free agents to go after. Pujols then becomes GM and at the age of 43 becomes Mayor of St. Louis."
If talks are moving slowly between Dan Lozano and the Cardinals I humbly offer them the spreadsheet on which all of our answers are tallied as a means of spurring discussion. I plan on removing all deals between 12-71 and 73-1000 years with an AAV of between $35-900 million before I hand it over.